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October 31, 2012

I always give a postcard to our Airbnb guests so I go through postcards pretty quickly. I needed some new ones and here's what I came up with.

My favorite materials for postcards are bits and leftovers. In a recent TED day with Estelle I had some leftover gold ink. So I pulled out these scraps of green hand dyed fabric and stamped some small leaves. These stamps are all from Fred B. Mullett.

Next I found this small pile of leftover hand dyed strips.

A few minutes at the machine and I had a crazy patch postcard built around the leaf print. At this point I was going to do some decorative stitching on the seams but I wasn't really in the mood for that. I did think it needed more gold though.

I stitched a gold leaf silhouette around the stamp. This is over stitched about 5 times so that the gold would stand out nicely. Then I used a gray/gold variegated thread to echo around the leaf shape. The edge is serged using 2 strands of different variegated greens. I still felt like it needed more gold so I did my little inside frame treatment.

The final result is not a masterpiece but it's not bad and now I have 10 more cards for guests.

October 30, 2012

I shared my Illuminated Blocks quilt last week and now that Quilt Market is over I can share with you the fabrics that I used. This is a new line by Benartex. It's designed by Paula Nadelstern and is called Fabrique-istan.

Fist is this great paisley design. It has all kids of little details, color shifts and tiny lines that are perfect in one of my symmetry blocks.

It comes in 3 more colorways.

This is my favorite print, and colorway, of the whole collection.

I used lots of parts of all 4 colorways in my blocks.

Her ikat print is magical. There are so many colors and lines here that really help disguise the piecing lines in my blocks.

Here are the 3 other colorways. When I started my quilt I didn't think I would use much of the blue. I was wrong...as usual! It has bits of yellow and green in it that makes a great bridge piece.

This block has pieces from each of the 3 patterns.

The collection also has 3 different blender/tonal patterns as well.

I used this one as my sashing. It comes in 5 colorways.

I used a print in this line as my binding and inner border. It comes in 9 colorways.

The collection also has 12 great tonals.

I can't wait until these are available in the stores so I can stock up.

October 29, 2012

If you participate in Barbara Brackman's block programs then you know my friend Becky. She tests Barbara's blocks for the rest of us. She first did that for the Civil War program last year and is doing it again this year for Grandmother's Choice. You can see her blocks in the blog post each week.

Becky's quilt is included in Barbara's new book, Civil War Sampler. C&T was developing a new product while Becky's quilt was there and they decided to use her quilt as the art for their new Fast2Clean Microfiber cloths. Isn't that cool? This would never happen to me.

In addition to the general coolness of knowing that's Becky's quilt, this is a cool product. It has the large microfiber cloth like any other cloth for cleaning eyeglasses. But it also has 3 small cloths that you can see at the bottom of the page.

These have static cling backs so they will stick to the bottom of your laptop, tablet or smartphone.

The smallest one is the perfect size for my Droid and I can stick it to the back so I always know where it is.

Well it's storm day and so far it's just gloomy, rainy and a little windy. Chris says that if we are going to lose power that it will be this evening. I never bother to look at the weather forecast. His degree is in meteorology so he watches and reads about weather all day long. I just wait for him to tell me what's going to happen. He has me properly prepared for this one. The gas fireplaces are ready, water is stored and I have hand projects set aside. Until the power goes out I will continue with my current projects and tasks.

Here's what's on my design wall. No, it's not mine....well, it is mine but I didn't make it. Wanda decided sell a few of her stash of quilt tops. I loved this one when she made it and decided to buy it. I'm going to finish it for a veteran's quilt. To do that it needs about 4" of border. Here are the 3 fabrics that I am currently considering. I like the batik on the left but Chris hates it. I also like both hand dyed options and am currently leaning toward the red on the bottom. Your options are welcome!

I got Kim's quilt loaded on Willie and started doing some of the stabilizing quilting. I want to get it all stabilized in case I need to take it off in the middle of the quilting for Mom to quilt one of her quilts. I haven't decided if I am going to share details of the quilting in process. It seems like there should be some surprise for Kim left in the quilt. I guess I'll let her tell me what she prefers.

While I still have power I'm heading off to use a lot of electricity. Things aren't going to be so bad here but I hope my friends in the Northeast will be OK. Hopefully everyone in the rest of you in the US and world are having a good creative day. Hop on over to Patchwork Times and see.

October 28, 2012

Like everyone else on the East Coast, we are doing storm preps today. We don't expect any damage or even a lot of rain but we are planning on a power outage so we are doing lots of preps today. When we are without power we are also without water. So I'm doing laundry, making some meals for the week and freezing containers of water to keep the food cold. Chris is also trying to get ready for his annual hunting trip. Hopefully he will be able to fly out of DC on schedule Wednesday.

My post today is going to be a quick one. As always, the quilt designs are made using the current fabric palette and that means the Woodlands palette this week. You can get ordering information for the fabric here.

This is Blockbase E005. With this palette I knew I needed to work with some tree blocks.

All of the designs this week have large center blocks and a variety of border blocks. Can you imagine peicing this? I can't but it's easy in Electric Quilt.

Look at what a difference it makes to change just a couple colors. This, in my opinion, is the very best benefit of EQ.